1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to a navigation system supporting vehicle navigation and personal navigation, and in particular, to an apparatus and method for switching a navigation mode between a vehicle navigation mode and a personal navigation mode in a navigation device supporting vehicle navigation and personal navigation.
2. Description of the Related Art
Vehicle navigation systems, for example a car navigation system, recognizes a current position of a user's car. It provides an optimal route to a user's desired destination to the user, and guides the user along the optimal route. Generally, car navigation calculates the current position of the car using a Global Positioning System (GPS) sensor and a Dead Reckoning (DR) sensor and guides a route from the current position to the destination.
Personal navigation devices guide a route for a walker, and is similar to car navigation. But unlike car navigation, it requires more accurate position measurement and more detailed route guiding because the speed of the walker is generally slower than that of the car.
Thus, car navigation and personal navigation perform route guiding using different navigation algorithms. For example, car navigation recognizes a current position of a car by directly integrating outputs of an accelerometer sensor, whereas personal navigation detects steps of a walker to recognize a current position of the walker. For this reason, car navigation and personal navigation use separate dedicated navigation devices for performing different algorithms or are implemented to operate different algorithms separately even when using one navigation device.
The use of separate navigation devices for car navigation and personal navigation increases cost and causes inconvenience. To solve the problem, a navigation device supporting both car navigation and personal navigation has been recently developed.
However, in conventional navigation devices supporting car navigation and personal navigation, a user is required to manually perform mode switching between car navigation and personal navigation. In other words, the user manually terminates car navigation and initiates personal navigation to use personal navigation during the use of car navigation, and vice versa.
As a result, conventional navigation devices cause inconvenience because the user has to separately input car navigation information and personal navigation information. Moreover, when the user mistakenly switches to car navigation for personal navigation or vice versa, it may result in wrong route guiding.